For
most of its early
history,
the Elektra label concentrated almost exclusively on the album market.
Prior to Love's "My Little Red Book" in 1966, they never had a
significant
entry on the national singles charts; prior to the same band's "7 and 7
Is" later that year, they never had a Top Forty hit. In 1967, this
would
change to some degree when the Doors' "Light My Fire" soared to #1,
followed
in the rest of the 1960s by several other Doors smashes and the Top Ten
success of Judy Collins's "Both Sides Now." Yet even into the first
half
of the 1970s, Elektra's product and aesthetic would remain firmly
geared
toward the long-playing record.

That didn't
prevent the
label
from often trying, however, to get both singles sales and AM radio
airplay.
From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, Elektra issued quite a few
singles,
which included a surprising number of non-LP tracks. Some of them, in
fact,
were by artists who never managed to record an album for Elektra; many
of the tracks have seldom or never been reissued since. On this
compilation,
Collectors' Choice Music gathers ten of the more interesting such
non-LP
sides from the mid-'60s through the beginning of the '70s.

Although it
wasn't until
Elektra
began recording rock music in the mid-1960s that any of their singles
attracted
national airplay, the company's ventures into the singles market
stretched
back further than many realize -- indeed, all the way to its earliest
days
in the early 1950s, when it was recording little else but folk music.
"There
was [an] attempt to get radio airplay going back to the very beginning
of the label," notes Elektra founder and president Jac Holzman. "In
fact,
we had a singles label at the very beginning called Stratford Records.
We were originally called the Elektra-Stratford Record Corporation.
They
came out as 78s, this is how early they were." But after a few 78s
(including
efforts by Jean Ritchie, Frank Warner, and a young Glenn Yarbrough), "I
decided that singles were a waste of time. So I stopped doing that
immediately,
and just concentrated on the LPs."

Still, Elektra
never
totally
abandoned the singles field. Around the late 1950s and early 1960s,
there
were 45s by two of the label's more popular and mainstream folkies,
Yarbrough
and Bob Gibson. As the early '60s approached the mid-'60s, there were
singles
by Dian & the Greenbriar Boys, the Dillards, Fred Neil & Vince
Martin, Judy Henske, and Judy Collins. In fact, Henske's "High Flying
Bird,"
which verged on rock'n'roll with its drums and electric guitar, sounds
like it could have even been a hit given the right push. For her part,
Collins recalled in a 2001 interview that her single of Pete Seeger's
"Turn!
Turn! Turn!" -- with a young, pre-Byrds Roger McGuinn on guitar --
"became
a bit of a minor hit. I remember it was the first time that the Gavin
Report took any notice of me; they wrote about 'Turn! Turn! Turn!,'
and how terrific it was. And I began to show up on the Billboard
and Cashbox lists, I believe."

"Turn! Turn!
Turn!" would,
of course, become a #1 hit in a folk-rock arrangement for McGuinn and
the
Byrds in late 1965, about a couple of years after Collins recorded it.
It's still not widely known, however, that about a year before the
Byrds
took Seeger's anthem to AM radio, and about six months before they
ignited
the folk-rock explosion with a chart-topping cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr.
Tambourine Man," Elektra Records had issued the band's debut single.
It's
not widely known for a simple reason: the single was credited to the
Beefeaters,
a name chosen by Holzman "because I was enamored of what was going on
with
the British Invasion." Both sides of that obscure 45, "Please Let Me
Love
You" and "Don't Be Long," kick off this Elektra non-LP rarities
anthology.

Of the five
original Byrds,
only McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby performed on this 45,
recorded
with the assistance of Los Angeles session men Ray Pohlman (on bass)
and
Earl Palmer (on drums). "Please Let Me Love You" showed the embryonic
Byrds
at their most Beatlesque, while "Don't Be Long" would be remade, in a
more
tightly arranged and well-recorded version, by the Byrds on their
second
album (under the title "It Won't Be Wrong"). Though simplistic and
overtly
Beatles-influenced, both sides (both penned by Clark, McGuinn, and
their
friend Harvey Gerst) were charming and catchy tunes, and intriguing (if
naive and rudimentary) documents of the band's first steps toward their
pioneering folk-rock fusion. The record made no commercial impact,
however,
and under the name of the Byrds, the band were soon recording for
Columbia,
where they'd quickly rise to stardom with "Mr. Tambourine Man."

Holzman isn't
sure why
Elektra
didn't record more with the Beefeaters/Byrds. "I don't know why we just
got the single, and didn't get the album," he admitted in a 2001
interview.
"[Byrds co-manager] Jim Dickson really wanted to be on a larger label.
He was concerned that singles would be necessary, and Elektra had no
track
records with singles. I think they wanted to keep the band a little
innocent,
in case there was an opportunity to make a deal elsewhere. My
recollection
is that they were asking for far more money than I was willing to pay.
Which, in retrospect, was stupid, 'cause I later paid that same amount
of money for Love. But they also wanted a ton of stuff that I didn't
want
to get started with, stuff that was routine in the '80s. They were
asking
for this stuff back in the mid-'60s." Specifically, Dickson told me in
an interview the same year, he and the Byrds wanted $5,000 from Holzman
to buy instruments. He also said the tracks used on the 45 were sold to
Jac with the understanding that Holzman select the name and not
disclose
the identity of the group. In Dickson's view, Jac broke that promise,
although
Holzman does not recall this.

Though it took a
while for
Elektra to fully immerse itself in rock, it continued to dabble in it
with
other non-LP folk-rock singles in the mid-1960s. In the early days of
folk-rock,
there was a boom in Bob Dylan covers, and Elektra entered the fray with
Judy Collins's rendition of "I'll Keep It With Mine" in late 1965.
"I'll
Keep It With Mine" was, on paper at least, a hot item, being an
unreleased
song by folk-rock's hottest songwriter. In fact, Nico had wanted to
record
the song first, but Collins beat her to the punch, though Nico would
release
her own version on her debut album a couple of years later. Despite
organ
by Al Kooper (who also played on some of Dylan's best early folk-rock
recordings,
including "Like a Rolling Stone"), and despite being hailed by future
Dylan
biographer Robert Shelton in The New York Times as "one of the
best
folk-rock performances yet recorded," and despite Collins's stature as
the most successful Elektra recording artist at that time, the single
stiffed.

"There's a very
good reason
that it never made it onto an album," Collins told me in 2001. "It's
not
a very good song, particularly. Certainly not a Dylan song that lives
up
to its name. It doesn't really go anywhere, the lyric's kind of flat,
and
the singing is very flat." All the same, she added, "I love the idea
that
he said, at least said to me, that he wrote the song for me.
Then
he told Joanie Baez that he wrote it for her. There was some talk about
that, as to who did what. Of course, he says in his retrospective album
[Biograph] that he wrote the song for me."

Another
established Elektra
artist who used a non-LP single as an opportunity to dive into electric
folk-rock for the first time -- with Al Kooper in tow again! -- was
Phil
Ochs. In its original acoustic folk guise, "I Ain't Marching Anymore"
had
already been the popular title track of Ochs's second album (as well as
quickly becoming a vastly popular singalong anthem at antiwar
demonstrations).
With backing by Kooper's new rock band, the Blues Project (also
including
guitarist Danny Kalb, who'd played guitar on Ochs's first album), and
production
by Elektra stalwart Paul Rothchild, it translated quite successfully
into
folk-rock. Starting and closing with bagpipes, the song was
exponentially
more powerful in its new arrangement -- enough so that it seemed like
it
could have had a chance on AM radio. Yet it was only released in
Britain
when it came out in 1966, though it did make it onto a flexi-disc in
the
US folk magazine Sing Out! It would, in fact, be Ochs's only
electric
rock recording for Elektra, though he'd make numerous others in the
following
few years after moving to A&M Records.

"It was basically
to test
the
waters," Michael Ochs, Phil's brother and (beginning in 1967) manager,
told me in 2001. "He wanted to expand his music, and so he thought,
'Wouldn't
this be great, to do a rock version.' I'm not sure that it was his
decision
to be careful and only put it out in England. Phil was very tight with
Murray the K, and Murray the K was on [New York's] WOR-FM at that
point,
doing a very hip show. Every week he'd play like three new releases for
major artists, and people would call in and pick their favorite. I know
he played Phil's electric 'I Ain't Marching Anymore' against the latest
Stones record and one other major one, and the calls that came in all
said
they loved Phil's record the best." Roger Daltrey of the Who, however,
did not love the record; in his review of the single in Melody Maker's
"Blind Date" column, he complained, "It sounds like a punished protest
song. Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off! It's not even good for my
grandmother."

Along with Judy
Collins and
Love, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were the biggest sellers on the
Elektra
roster just prior to the emergence of the Doors. Though their sales
came
almost exclusively from album-buyers, they didn't totally ignore the
singles
market. In 1966, they came up with the non-LP 45 "Come On In," which
boasted
somewhat of a funkier rock-soul feel than their more customary electric
blues approach. It should be noted, however, that the Butterfield Band
were never purists, even if they started out playing nothing but the
blues.
By their second and best album, East West, they were branching
out
into a cover of the jazz standard "Work Song," the tour de force
thirteen-minute
psychedelic instrumental "East West," and even a pass at Mike Nesmith's
"Mary, Mary." "Come On In" didn't give Butterfield a pass into the hit
parade, but his band remained a popular Elektra act throughout the rest
of the decade, even after the departures of ace guitarists Mike
Bloomfield
and Elvin Bishop, both of whom played on the single.

The Doors'
phenomenally
popular
1967 debut album, including the #1 hit "Light My Fire," launched
Elektra
into the psychedelic era with a vengeance. While the Doors were by far
the label's biggest sellers in the 45 market, Elektra did land some
other
chart hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the biggest of them being
Judy Collins's Top Ten cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." Many
people who own that single, however, are unaware to this day that the
B-side
was not issued on LP at the time. For the song on the flip was Sandy
Denny's
"Who Knows Where the Time Goes," which was used as the title track of
her
well-received late-'60s album of the same name. However, the recording
used on the B-side of the single was an entirely different one than the
LP version, which had a full-band production and a dramatic rising key
change mid-song. In contrast, the B-side version featured a much
sparser
drumless arrangement minus that key change. For a non-LP B-side, it
must
be said, it did get around: it was also used for the film soundtrack of
The Subject Was Roses, and later showed up on the 1972 Judy
Collins
greatest hits collection Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins.
And now, naturally, it's on this CD.

Collins had a
great knack
for
introducing the work of as-yet-little-known songwriters to a wider
audience
via her cover versions, having been among the first singers to record
compositions
by such outstanding composers as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Randy
Newman,
Robin Williamson, Richard Fariña, Eric Andersen, John Phillips,
Fred Neil, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell. Sandy Denny
was one of her lesser-heralded such discoveries, and it's a testament
to
Collins's adventurousness in recording up-and-coming writers that the
song
was recorded in the first place. For Sandy Denny, and even her
late-'60s
group Fairport Convention, were barely known in the United States when
Judy recorded "Who Knows Where the Time Goes." As Collins remembered in
her autobiography Singing Lessons, it was her producer of the
time,
David Anderle, who made her aware of the song. "One day David Anderle
said,
'I have a tape to play for you,' and put on Sandy Denny's great song,
'Who
Knows Where the Time Goes,'" she wrote. "I fell head over heels in love
with the song and used it as the title song of the album...She was a
great
writer and I came to know and hang out with her later in England when
Anthea
Joseph, a red-haired fireball who worked for Polygram in England,
introduced
us. Sandy was pretty and blond, with a voice that could cut through a
concrete
wall or lull a baby to sleep. Her solos with the Fairport Convention
are
still hauntingly beautiful. On a visit to New York she once came to my
apartment and we swapped songs. She sang me a great song called 'Solo,'
which I would someday like to record."

In the late '60s,
David
Anderle
was also producing another Elektra artist, David Ackles. Though his
darkly
theatrical brand of singer-songwriting generated a cult following among
album-oriented listeners and some fellow musicians (most notably the
young
songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin), Ackles racked up few
actual sales for the label. Elektra nonetheless did release a single of
his in 1968, "Down River," backed by one of the oddest items in the
company's
whole catalog, "La Route a Chicago." A French-language version of "The
Road to Cairo," one of the stronger numbers on his 1968 self-titled
debut
LP, it's one of the rarest (and strangest) tracks only to show up on an
Elektra 45. "The Road to Cairo," incidentally, was one of Anderle's
most
commercial numbers, if there could be said to even be any such things;
Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger, & the Trinity covered it on a single
as
the follow-up to their big British hit "This Wheel's on Fire," although
it didn't make the UK charts.

It's still a
mystery as to
how this French version of the song came to pass. " I remember -- and
it
might have even been Jac Holzman -- but somebody thought that David
would
have a shot in France, because of the nature of Charles Aznavour and
the
French ballad singers," Anderle told me in a 2002 interview. "Somebody
had a mention that his music was very remindful of French balladeer
music.
Jacques Brel, I think, was the person that was mentioned. It might even
have come from Judy Collins, who I was producing at the time also. I
think
Elektra figured he would have a shot internationally. And so he did the
French version of the song. Maybe it was paid for by the French office?
I'm surprised we didn't do an Egyptian one, a Tasmanian one, and...we
tried
everything with that poor guy." Elektra did indeed try with three
separate
David Ackles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though only the third
of
them made the Billboard charts, and then peaking at a lowly
#167.
"David Ackles was one of my great disappointments, that we weren't able
to do better with him," admits Holzman. "I thought he was terrific. But
then the person who admired him most wiped him off the map" -- that
person
being Ackles fan Elton John, whose songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin,
would end up producing that final Elektra Ackles album, American
Gothic.

As another
overlooked
Elektra
act of the late 1960s, Eclection put out just one self-titled album
before
breaking up. Though usually described as a British folk-rock group,
only
one member was actually British, the others hailing from Norway,
Canada,
and Australia. The Eclection album is one of the best
little-known
folk-rock LPs of the era, its strong male-female vocal harmonies and
rich
orchestral production at times making the group sound more like a
California
group than a British one. The record was promising enough to make
collectors
wish there was more, and in fact there is more, in the form of
the
non-LP B-side included on this CD, "Mark Time." The track could have
fit
into the Eclection album without a hitch, but didn't make that
cut
and never surfaced again, Eclection itself marking time before their
possibly
premature split. Eclection bassist Trevor Lucas would later team up
with
future wife Sandy Denny (as well as Eclection drummer Gerry Conway) in
Fotheringay and a mid-'70s Fairport Convention lineup, while chief
Eclection
songwriter Georg Hultgreen would (as Georg Kajanus) join Sailor, who
had
a couple of Top Ten British singles in the mid-1970s.

"I loved that
group,"
Holzman
told me in a 2001 interview. "They were a fascinating group, a
wonderful
band, and I thought the records were wonderful. I think our mistake was
not bringing them to the States, because they really needed to get out
of England. There was too much other stuff competing in England, and in
the States, we might have had an easier time. I don't know why we
didn't
bring 'em. I think, had we got 'em the right venues and gotten them
some
help with their show, it would have worked."

At least
Eclection got to
release
an album, an honor denied the Stalk-Forrest Group, although the band
recorded
quite a bit of material for Elektra in the first half of 1970. Nowadays
the outfit are primarily remembered for having evolved into Blue
Öyster
Cult. But as the Stalk-Forrest Group, they played a far lighter brand
of
psychedelic-folk-rock that fit in well with the Elektra roster, with
some
similarities to the sound of fellow Elektra artists Love and the Doors.
Legendary rock critic Richard Meltzer was a friend of the band, and
contributed
lyrics to much of their material, as did fellow rock critic Sandy
Pearlman,
who also managed the group. For reasons that are still not totally
clear,
Elektra decided not to release an LP, though enough songs had been
recorded
to produce a fairly strong one. "I think I didn't like the group,"
Holzman
frankly states. "Had I heard Blue Öyster Cult more evolved, that
would
have been another matter. They altered the personnel, and the group
then
became very solid." Before the band got dropped from the label,
however,
two tracks -- the A-side co-written by Meltzer and future Blue
Öyster
Cult keyboardist-guitarist Allen Lanier, the B-side by Meltzer and
future
Blue Öyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard -- did eke out in July
1970
as a promotional single, of which only about 300 copies were pressed.
Both
sides of that 45, "What Is Quicksand?"/"Arthur Comics," conclude our
Elektra
rarities compilation, which in its own small way reflects the label's
evolution
as a whole from folk through folk-rock to psychedelia and the dawn of
hard
rock. -- Richie Unterberger